"You can while away hours perusing the place, but the Grade II-listed natural history gallery – refreshingly devoid of computer touchscreens – possibly contains the most memorable: a comically over-stuffed walrus (the work of an over-zealous 1880s taxidermist).

There’s much fun to be had in the music gallery, too, where the impressive collection of 7,000 instruments includes an Iranian zarb, 600 concertinas and a pair of Egyptian clappers dating to 1,500BC. Wandering through the rest of the museum, you’ll discover an Egyptian mummy, a Nigerian Ijele (a special ceremonial African mask), Inuit seal-skin clothing, Vodou altars and a functional beehive."

Got First Life Questions?
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Are five senses enough?
What's this body thing, and what do I do with the dangly bits?
Why can't I build a dirigible with my mind?
Penguins, spoons and you -- what's life like among the the flightless?

The oldest backgammon in the world along with 60 pieces has been
unearthed beneath the rubbles of the legendary Burnt City in
Sistan-Baluchistan province, southeastern Iran.

Iranian archeologists working on the relics of the 5,000-year-old
civilization argue this backgammon is much older than the one already
discovered in Mesopotamia and their evidence is strong enough to claim
the board game was first played in the Burnt City and then transferred
to other civilizations.

Along the length of the strip is a pattern of fine ridges or lines. Run
your thumb nail along the ridges, and the tape speaks. However the
sound needs to be magnified, so that you can hear it. One method is to
hold one end of the strip between your teeth. Then, when you run your
nail along the strip you hear it talk, but no-one else does.

Want. Reminds me of my love for playing the oven shelf, and the joy of sound that only one person can hear. (via Boing Boing)

I'm curious about the algorithm which predicts gender based on writing style. The Gender Genie doesn't seem too sure about my gender much of the time. Must use less lists and more personal pronouns it seems.

Given the Gender Genie's hopeless record in identifying the sex of
the Guardian's women columnists, it is tempting to write it off as a
piece of rubbish. But it's not quite possible to do that, for its
guesses have proven accurate in 72% of cases, which may be less than
the 80% claimed, but is quite impressive all the same.

Maybe it
just shows that Guardian women do not conform to the stereotypical
perception of the differences between male and female uses of language.
Maybe it shows that this newspaper's women columnists, unlike the women
columnists on other publications, are not mainly interested in personal
relationships. In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins sings with
exasperation, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" If he had only
met a few of the Guardian's female writers, he might have found that a
woman can be just like a man when it comes to the matters that interest
her.